Dr Forbidden, head of DDS ResearchRecently i have seen some misconceptions about the worm drive printed in the popular DDS media and social media channels and so i have decided to write some notes to help raise the general understanding of this new propulsion technology.
What is worm drive?
Traditional superluminal propulsion involves breaking into subspace (hyperspace as it is known) and using sheer brute force to travel faster than light. One drawback of this method is the amount of energy required simply becomes too great once you reach 1000c. Some of our ships can reach that speed for short periods but it is thought 1200c is the maximum speed possible using this method.
Worm drive is totally different. It involves tunelling an artificial worm hole deep in subspace and travelling instantaneously between two points.
So how fast is this?
In essence a journey of several lightyears can be carried out in seconds however the massive amount of power required means that it takes several hours to recharge the worm hole generator before the next jump. What we and the Dinos use is an equivalent speed scale using the c scale (speed of light) for hyperspace travel. Taking the jump and then the rest period into account then ships with the worm drive can currently travel at an equivalent speed to around 5000c if they were using hyperspace (if that were possible!)
So we don't need hyperspace drive anymore right?
Well we do. One drawback of worm drive using its current (and so far only known implementation) is that the length of worm hole generated is fixed. What does this mean well lets take an example of a journey to a star that is 12 light years away. If a generated worm hole is 5 light years long then two jumps will take the ship 10 light years but obviously a third jump would take it way beyond its destination. The rest of the journey is thus carried out using hyperspace.
Worm drives also need time to cool down after use and to recharge. Therefore in an emergency you may not be able to use your worm drive to get out of trouble and instead need to jump to hyperspace instead. Until these problems are sorted out hyperspace drive will remain necessary.
How will worm drive develop in future?
The time taken to recharge is likely to reduce over time thus increasing the equivalent speed. the Dinos are already testing a "6000c" drive which they'll deploy in a few years. At the moment we are just concentrating on getting our own production line into operation and understanding the technology but rest assured improvements are in the pipeline.
